toyska | catchall; gideon

[Gideon gets a memory with a hot lady "that's not the point of this memory" yes it is

WHICH IS TO SAY--they have probably gone off to investigate the new island?? Or maybe they're just dicking around or sparring or whatever else two redheaded idiots do on a Monday. Either way, the ground falls out beneath them eventually; A memory begins to play behind them before Childe can speak one way or the other.

Well. Hm. Could've been worse, at least.]

[probably exploring the new island and dicking around, that's kind of just gideon's whole thing. but the ground falls out, and gideon just SIGHS, but. they have to watch it, so she does.

when it's over, she takes a deep breath. that's - unsettlingly familiar.]

Warriors do not say I can't. [she repeats.] Sounds like shit Aiglamene would've said.

[SOMETIMES... you wind up in a place you shouldn't be and then every ounce of fear is pulverized out of you? It happens.

Childe watched the whole thing with a neutral, albeit slightly distant, expression; he doesn't seem terribly bothered about this being shared, at least. Instead, he looks at her curiously.]

Aiglamene?

Yeah, my...

[she pauses for a second, like she's really struggling to think of a word to describe what aiglamene is. who she is. finally, she corrects herself.]

The woman who taught me how to use a sword.

[Ah. he nods in understanding.]

That's what Master Skirk was to me. I haven't seen her in years, though. [He smiles slightly.] Before we parted ways, she could still defeat me with one hand.

[she glances at the screen again, and then:]

Aiglamene too. She had a bum leg and she still wiped the floor with me. [huff.] Where were you? In that memory.

[Ah. There's visible hesitation, there--slight, almost unnoticeable unless you're looking for it, but present all the same.

It's a little silly to safeguard secrets under the circumstances, he knows. He doesn't have many to begin with, really--he chose, early on in his days within the Fatui, to remain bold and open in contrast to his colleagues. In a world of secrets and lies, there are few things more dangerous than an honest man.

This, though--this is something personal. Moreso than even the memory of his father he'd shared with her, after Lu Bixing and Four's execution. It doesn't matter here, so far from Teyvat, but... still. Old habits die hard, and it takes him a minute to put things into words.]

It's a place in my world called The Abyss. It's where I ended up when I ran away from home. ["Restless kids get up to no good."] Very few humans can enter it.

[He assumes it's obvious that even fewer make it out.]

[she doesn't push, at least. she just lets him say what he's going to say. gideon moves first and asks for forgiveness later, so she figures if there's something he doesn't want to talk about, he just won't.

the abyss, he says - not a very fun place, by the sound of it.]

But you did. And you didn't stay there. [she says, adjusting her glasses.]

[She is right in that, at least--Childe is very good at deflecting.

He smiles, though it's a touch rueful.]

It's more like I fell in. [Cold snow, winter winds--the howl of wolves and the distant growling of bears beyond the trees.] But no, I didn't stay. Master Skirk taught me how to survive down there, and to get stronger. Eventually, she showed me how to escape. That was almost ten years ago, now--I haven't seen her since.

[she rubs at her arm a little, almost like. sympathy cold. and then:]

Would you want to? [see her again.]

I do. [That one's easy.] I've always wanted to go back and face her again, show her how far I've come. [He grins, and it seems more-or-less genuine.] See if I can make her use two hands to beat me, this time.

[snort.]

I understand that, except I think I'd just want to shove Aiglamene's face in all the comments people made about me being fast.

[she's from pluto there's a gravity thing going on there.] ... God. Ten years ago. You were a kid.

[also, the screen flickers a bit behind them.]

Haha, I'd like to see them face off.

[Skirk vs. Aiglamene GO... now that would be a sight.

He sighs, then.]

All kids have to grow up eventually. [He knows that. He really, truly does--which is why he doesn't attempt to shield or baby the teenagers here. They're close enough to "adults" that it's reasonable, he thinks, that they've lost their innocence by now. Still...] I'm content with where I ended up, but I don't want my siblings to follow in my footsteps, either. It's not the right path for them.

[she tilts her head back. and she's going to answer, because she has thoughts about kids being forced to grow up, but the screen buzzes, and blares loudly, a first person view with added narration.

Abruptly, it's dark.

Behind you, the lights go down with a rhythmic boom, boom, boom. Your fingers linger on the touchpad where your necromancer's blood left a stain, and then you pull away, and keep walking. Behind you, a teenage boy, maybe fourteen, turns buries his sweaty face against the shoulder of his cavalier primary, a fourteen year old girl. This hurts you to look at. They were supposed to ship out on missions last year, they'd said. For all you'd dreamed of joining the Cohort by the time you were eight years old... maybe that's too young.

The Sanitiser corridor leads to the main artery. The lights behind you finally catch up, going off and leaving you and the teens in complete darkness. You hurriedly whip off your glasses and buzz with anxiety. This is wrong. Something here is wrong.

(behind you, the teenage girl whispers your wards aren't tripped, it's just the lights, don't freak out, you're good, there's nobody down here, to her necromancer)

And then, one of the lights behind you flickers back on. It throws the metal siding in front of you into sharp relief - there are words that were not there a second ago, written in fresh, red blood:

DEATH TO THE FOURTH HOUSE

And there's an explosion of activity. The necromancer behind you shrieks, blue and green lights flashing wildly as his cavalier tries to calm him down, but it's not enough. He takes off into the room ahead of you, terrified, and you don't have time to really register the biggest construct you've ever seen in your life. It's a skeleton - it fills the room, a nightmare, a squatting, vertiginous hulk, a nonsense of bones feathering into long, spidery legs, leaning back on them fearfully and daintily; trailing jellyfish stingers made up of millions and millions of teeth all set into each other like a jigsaw. It shivers its stingers, then stiffens all of them at once with a sound like a cracking whip. It cringes back just for a moment as the boy screams soundlessly at it, throwing his arms out and expending what you know to be some sort of necromancy in an attempt to dissolve the construct.

That, of all things, wakes you up. You grab your sword and you run in, smashing your fist into a stinger and ignoring the damage it tries to do to you, but there's so much of it, there's too much, and so you bellow at the top of your lungs: "Run! Don't fight it, RUN--"

But he doesn't run. It's one of the bravest and stupidest things you have ever fucking seen. He creates a vortex of blue-green fire, trying to suck the thing in, and it looks at him almost curiously for a second before fifty long straight spars of teeth spear him through, all at once.

You don't think. You charge. You grab the girl, who is screaming hard enough to tear her throat apart, and you run. You run.

(you realize later that what she was saying was fidelity! fidelity! fidelity!)

You slam the door behind you, getting away from the tendrils of bone, from the gore splattered across the room, and you lock it. The girl in your arms kicks and screams and weeps, makes guttural sounds, reduced to the sound of someone whose heart had broken forever, and you have no idea what to do, so you keep moving, because you have to - you have to keep one person safe. You have to keep her safe, so you have to get out of here. You go to a room that only you have the key to, and you put the girl down, and she curls up on a bed and shouts at you.

"You don't understand, Issac's cautious. Not reckless. He's not - he didn't - He was always so careful, he shouldn't have - I hated him when we were little, he wasn't at all what I wanted--"

You take it, and she dissolves into tears again. It's a Herculean struggle to get her to go lay down, to make her drink some water, to let her sleep. She needs sleep. She deserves the sleep, just for a second. You close your eyes, just for a second. You don't mean to fall asleep. It's only for fifteen minutes at the most.

When you open your eyes, and see the huge shafts of bone spearing through the girl's chest, thighs, shoulders, see her staring lifelessly at the ceiling, you don't understand what you're looking at.

"No, no, no, no, no, no --"

Oh. That's your own voice.

... well. she's not a fan of that one.]

[Ah.

It's not like he didn't know a trade was coming--it has nearly every time, so far. But he's smart enough to recognize the imbalance, here. Yes, his memory was personal; but she only witnessed the loss of his innocence, and not even the moment of. This is not the same.

Childe has no illusions about his own morality. He does not claim to be a good person. But he does try to be a fair one, when he can. It's the reason he's so careful about when he pries, versus when he pulls back--as a man used to operating with an abundance of others' secrets, he knows very well how to evaluate the weight of what he learns and what he shares in return.

So when the memory fades, he doesn't say anything, at first. He lets her decide, instead--if she wants to discuss it, he'll listen. If she doesn't, he'll move on.]

[she's quiet for a bit, and then:]

I didn't mean to let her die. [kind of... conversational, almost. like this is no big deal.]

[I gathered as much, he doesn't say; not the right sort of levity, not right now. Instead, he hums--noncommittal, but acknowledgment all the same.]

Who were they?

One of the other necro-cav pairs at Canaan House. Like me and Harrowhark.

[she rubs at her chest.] Issac and Jeannemary.

Ah.

["DEATH TO THE FOURTH HOUSE," the message had read--he can only guess at the politics of the whole situation, but he doesn't need to know the details to suspect that those words were relevant to what happened next.]

...What was that creature? The one that attacked you.

[What happened? is the true question there, but--again, it's for her to share if she wants to. He wonders if, perhaps, they were her charges in some way--not dissimilar to the way he's trained new recruits--but he won't push for details she doesn't want to give.]

A bone construct. [she chews absently at her lip.] It lived in the labs. Dulcinea... [a beat. she corrects herself:] Cytherea either made it or took control of it. It picked people off, pair by pair.

I was looking after those two. And did a shit job, obviously.

[See, here's the thing--Childe knows what's proper to say here. Unlike most of his colleagues, Childe lives life in the open as much as he can, balancing out the work he does in the shadows. He's not Scaramouche, who has only known bitterness and hatred; he's not Signora, who iced over her heart in grief. The friendly demeanor he's worn here may be just one facet of his personality, but it is not a facade.

He's well aware that the proper thing to do would be to reassure her. To promise her that it wasn't her fault, that she didn't do a bad job, that she protected them as best she could. It would even be the truth--from where he's standing, it seemed obvious that they were caught by surprise. And it only takes one conversation with Gideon to know that she's the sort who would give no less than the entirety of her life to fulfill a promise. (Or maybe he's just projecting.)

"It's not your fault" is what she deserves to hear--but at the same time, what good will it do? They're dead, and nothing he says will bring them back. Even if she accepted his words, even if he made her feel better instead of putting her on the defensive, he suspects it would only be temporary. He has no idea how long she's carried this guilt, but he doubts that an outsider, someone she's only known for a month, could truly lift it off her shoulders. Especially not someone like him, who, while more in touch with his humanity than most of his colleagues, is far from the most comforting person around.

Besides, it may serve her better to hold onto it. If a soldier broke over every single death, they would never survive. That's likely something they both understand.

So instead, he nods--not in agreement, just as an acknowledgment. An, "I hear you," with no strings attached.]

Did you end up killing it? The construct.

[she doesn't seem to be upset or even surprised that he asks her that - because he's right. they both do understand that. for gideon, it's a reminder. she's not broken by it, but she does think about it, every time she fucks up.

i didn't mean to let them die she'd said to harrowhark, furious and wild. this is all she's good for, is buying time.]

Yeah. Well, no. Harrowhark did. I'm just the battery.

Really? [He looks a little surprised.] She doesn't seem the type.

[He obviously doesn't really know that much about how their bone powers work, but Harrow doesn't seem the type to be out on the battlefield in the first place.]

That's the point of cavaliers. We do the blocking, and necromancers beat the shit out of each other with bones and spontaneous heart attacks.

catchall; gideon

w3, monday or tuesday

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